Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Oliphant Tusks



Tilden Park, Berkeley, CA.

The Peace Grove.



 

Monday, December 28, 2020

Friday, December 25, 2020

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Friday, December 4, 2020

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Reflections: Brown to Gray to White

Getting older every day:
why does that continue to surprise me?

I am often startled by the morning reflection in the mirror, somehow not expecting so much white and gray hair each morning, though I have been graying since my mid-30s, even though I watched and assessed my father, brown to gray, gray to white.  I must be -- another surprise -- resistant, a slow learner.
I know how old I am; yet why do the visible signs surprise me so often?  My dad more or less told me I live in my head too much, and I guess this is all proof of that.

My dad lived to age 70, and every visit from age 62 on contained a bit of surprise for me when I would be faced with the brute fact that my father in the flesh didn't match the vision in my mind.  I think Dad-at-59, for some reason, held position mentally as the reigning image, even as he aged, moved into his 60s, became 70.

I am now 59 . . . so maybe that's why the needle is stuck on some record in this head of mine.


 Not so sure about the latest solo scissors-cut (nicked my own ear this time around), but it has always grown out before . . . .

Friday, November 27, 2020

Monday, November 9, 2020

Rain, Finally


 Though not quite enough porridge in the bowl.  More rain needed.



Friday, November 6, 2020

Honors 1B: Course Design?

I have to figure out my booklist for Honors 1B (intro to lit) next term, and I feel a little befuddled.  

I have ordered at least two new poetry handbooks from the local bookstore to help me, but the current miasma of pandemic + political chaos makes looking forward difficult. 

(Just venting, I guess.)


 

Berkeley Taught Me . . .

Berkeley taught me rigor and an independent voice.  Yes, I was expected to absorb the tremendous amounts of reading in each class, but I was also expected to have a critical sense and a critical voice, my own voice, in the context of each class.  I was not told to research the smarter person's findings, but I was given models of authority and was expected to find my place and my voice amidst those authorities, digging into and commenting on the primary texts at hand.  I am describing my first three years--freshman to junior--starting in 1979.  

Looking back, I so value how my professors were training me to have an independent mind, grounded in methodology and evidence.  In the fourth year, I was ready to face the deep waters of research in general and schools of literary criticism in particular.  I would not have fared so well without the support for my own findings and without all the practice in being an authority, at being a legitimate reader.

That education has deeply influenced how I teach, how I design classes, how I foster excellence.